With the advent of the map editor, pro units and in particular air and naval units have become much more commonly used. The new maps and scenarios show that some units could do with some tweaking. E.g. Battle ships are too powerful and can often dominate games while other units get rarely used.
In order to improve the overall balance between units we have collated a set of changes we’d like you to test on a dedicated test system. We do not expect them to be perfect yet but with your feedback we will be able to improve them until they are ready to be rolled out to the live system.
The exact changes are posted over at tangler, where you also have a chance to discuss them in detail and feed back your findings from the test. You can sign up for the test over on test.weewar.com (please note the test in the domain). Upgrades to pro are free but please do test non pro games as well.
The changes affect a great many things so you might look at the corresponding post on tangler for the nitty gritty details, but broadly they are:
- Decreased anti air abilities for most land units
- Battle ships have reduced abilities against air units and are generally weaker
- Bombers are cheaper and have better attack values against ships
- Destroyers are cheaper and have increased attack values against air units
- Submarines can now do ranged attacks
- Light artillery is cheaper
We are quite exited about these changes and are really looking forward to your feedback.
21 Comments
I like many of the ideas for unit balancing you have posted. I do have one other complaint. I don’t believe ships should be able to make ranged attacks at air units. The idea behind ships making ranged attacks would be the ability to launch shells long distance, as per artillery. However, their AA guns would not have so much range… it just doesn’t make sense that a battleship can hit a bomber from such a distance.
Battleships are indeed formidable battle platforms. That’s what they are!
They do cost 2000 pts, so I think they need to pack a commensurate punch, as they do in the current game. I’m not sure I favor a reduction in their mobility and fire power.
Launching shells long distance against land and sea targets is their strength, but as I understand it, modern heavy fighting ships are also equipped with batteries of surface to air missiles that can take out aircraft, or even cruise missiles, at a distance.
So I can see it appropriate for ships to have good surface to air power at range as well.
Having said all that, I am by no means any sort of authority on these matters, just an opinionated player :)
Hi- I recently tried my first game with battleships and I have to agree with the criticism that they tend to skew the game. So while Bradley (above) has a great point that in real life battleships may be very capable of destroying all the other units, they made the game that I was playing in very one-dimensional (and I’m sorry to say- kind of boring). Basically, everybody was scrambling to create either battleships or (if they couldn’t afford battleships) submarines to kill the battlships. There was almost no point in doing anything else because whoever had the most battleships was going to win.
As a total aside, I would love if the weewar team created a sea transport unit that could carry land units across water, That would add a whole new dimension.
cheers-
Armand
I think that instead of nerfing the Battleships you should raise the price to 2500 or even 3000. It’s fine as it is, especially with subs being able to do ranged attacks. It’s just too cheap.
I think that with this set of changes you’ll just switch from a BS dominated game to a bomber dominated game.
I think battleships need to be weakened because they are way to powerful.
Battleships are fine as they are but are massively underpriced. They have roughly the equivalent firepower of a DFA and they have the range of a DFA. However, unlike a DFA, they can move and shoot (twice) in the same turn and the firepower can be applied to air units.
In my book, that makes a battleship equivalent to two DFA’s plus a premium because it can move and shoot and attack air units. A DFA is 1200 so a battleship should be 3000 to 3600. Maybe even as much as 4000.
In real life, they are highly prized units and the loss of one really hurts. That should be reflected in the cost to build the unit. Nobody should be able to take the loss of one on the chin.
If you are unable to build subs, DFA’s and bombers are the only things that will scratch them effectively and a DFA can’t get there because it can’t move and shoot in a turn. For a bomber, it is a one way trip each time. Not sure what the alternative is. Ranged attacks from aircraft using stand off missiles perhaps?
What I would like to see is the ability for subs to move through enemy units and ZOCs. Ever had a sub penned in by six speedboats which it can’t attack or move away from?
Honestly Bombers are either too powerful, or AA units aren’t effective at said air targets. Bombers are pretty powerful, and so are Battleships. Honestly most of the things are good, maybe make battleships a little more air powerful, even change the ground target power down if wanted.
Good work guys.
And from the Grammar Nazi files, as you review a new game to join, it says -
” The time limit per turn is 1 day.
This game is rated. (players can loose and gain points)”
Loose? As in not tight??
Perhaps Lose?? As in NOT WIN
in real life, they pretty much stopped making battleships because they were too vulnerable to air strike. So I think it would be pretty reasonable to make battleships relatively weak against air (and probably only have adjacent attack power against air), so that to use them effectively one must combine their use with solid air superiority measures. That plus some price increase (2500 or 3000) would fix them pretty well I think, as well as reflect the reality of naval combat.
When are you going to fix the replay button? It only replays half of the game and then freezes.
1) Battleships should be more expensive, and they should not have ranged attacks against air.
2) Subs should be vulnerable to attack from any unit while in a harbor.
3) Helicopters should be able to capture.
4) Air units should not be subject to any ZOC.
I think a lot of the balancing issues can be resolved through raising the prices. If everyone just makes battleships and hovers, maybe they aren’t priced high enough. Every unit should have an achilles heel that they should cower before. The battleship should be extremely vulnerable to air and subs, for example. Artillery is vulnerable to air and anything close. Etc.
Why isn’t the email verification working?
Test server isn’t working for me…
When I click on the bookmark for my headquarters, It redirects me back to the normal weewar hq.
oh, and if I try to go to test.weewar.com, It doesn’t go… it keeps on loading and loading
1.Battleships moving and shooting twice on anything with this strenght are unstoppable and unfair for the current price.
2.Aircraft should be able to ignore zones of control by land units (except for air defence unit)!
Is test.weewar.com down right now? I haven’t been able to load it since last night.
The verification still ain’t working.
Test server is over. :( I wanna see all my maps and finish my games.
Thank you all for your feedback so far! The test is not over yet – we’ll restart the test server asap!
The issue with the verification emails not working is resolved now. Just request another one and follow the directions to start playing right away (on the live system)
test.weewar.com is up and running again. Sorry for the down time!
We’ll be turning off test in a few moments to implement your feedback. We’ll start it for another round of testing soon (as soon as tomorrow possibly).